Lowrance on Ice

Does anyone have any experience using their lowrance on ice? I am considering using my HDS 7 Gen 2 on ice in place of buying a new ice unit.

Does they have more lag or delay than say a Vex or Marcum?

How would you rate the battery life?

How would you rate it overall over the traditional ice units?

Thanks in advance!

I use the elite 5 and it is so great for ice cant beat graph mode with gps!! I have got 12+ hours off the battery and it still was not dead! I was a vex flasher guy till I first used graph mode would never go back! I have absolutely no lag they work great

Using my HDS7 on the ice. Got a Vexilar blue box and mounted the unit on it. It seems a bit hard on the battery….battery is 5 years old – that might be the problem – get 3-4 hours of use. I have a couple of new 8 amps on order. Gets better battery life if you dim the backlight to 3 or 4. Other than that, it works great. As for lag time….when I jig the bait it shows up….don’t notice any lag time.
bestfishes – jim

I rigged my hds5 gen2 for the ice for an extra unit and it’s great! Super sensitive and a lot of adjustments you can make to dial it in well. I would suggest turning off auto and go manual mode for sensitivity and things like that. Turn back light down as suggested and it’s fun. That 7 would be great. I also run a marcum lx7

Go to toys for big boys forum and select lowrance

Been using the same Lowrance unit on ice since 2005, an x76c. Wouldn’t go back to a flasher for nuthin. Would only consider digital units to upgrade to, and there’s a lot of them now. I run all weekend without a charge with the screen light turned off during the day on on low at night. There’s no lag, thats a holdover from the days of cold old-school LCD displays from the 90’s. Ditto on turning off all the automatic stuff you use in the boat, so manual and tune it yourself. Only downside is there’s a small number of frequency interference patterns from other sonars that my old software can’t deal with, but I don’t fish that close to other people using a sonar so its never an issue. Love having graph on ice, can see what happened in the last minute down there if I looked away and how big the fish was in color that came by. Never use a camera while ice fishing with a graph, only to scout bottom content now.

Great info guys. I think I’m gonna get a ducer and go for it. I have also heard that the lithium batteries may have 2-3 times the battery life and will help save on weight.

I’ll post a review and some pics when this little project is complete.

Get the ducer with the blue end no need for the adapter kit they sell. I just got mine.

I am in the process of setting up mine right now. I have a HDS7 gen 1 and my daughter is buying me a transducer for Christmas. I have found that this unit will fit in one of those “kitty litter” pails. Two 7amp hour batteries will lay down in the bottom and I will mount the HDS7 above the batteries. I plan to wire up a pair of external terminals to attach a charger so I don’t need to access the batteries until such time they need replaced.

I have a HDS gen2 touch 7. But I also have an Lx9. Would it be worth it to try the gen2 touch for ice?

If you need an extra unit why not? I would see if it has ice mode and any recommendations that have for the touch screen in cold. At least rig it for your truck

biggill wrote:

Great info guys. I think I’m gonna get a ducer and go for it. I have also heard that the lithium batteries may have 2-3 times the battery life and will help save on weight.

I’ll post a review and some pics when this little project is complete.

I use a 4 amp Lithium with my Elite 5. Runs for a long time.

I have been using a Lms522 for quite a few winters(5 i think).I can get a good 10-12 hr day of fishing on a 8ah battery.As others said allready,keep the backlight as dim as possible for the situation.Another thing I do when I have gotten to where I am fishing or if fishing in a shack is to turn the Gps off.Dont know about the newer Hds units but theres an option on mine to use indoors that stops the unit from searching for sattellites.

I have used my HDS7 Gen1 on the ice for 3-4 years mounted on a Genz blue box. The blue box I have is the new kind but the older ones are a better fit. I mainly use it for GPS. It works fine in the sonar mode but just can’t get used to it vs my Vexilars. This year I am going to try and use it more in the flasher mode and see how it compares to the Vex.

Make sure and have a power shut off since the internal GPS antenna will draw down the battery even if the power is shut off on the unit. Also, I run mine with the screen brightness as low as I can and get between 4-6 hours on a charge.